Whitewashed
by TheNextFolchart
Summary: People come and go, but Oliver is always here, in this place that smells like formaldehyde and looks like a whitewashed prison. / Hospital!AU


**Whitewashed**

_Previously Titled "Life Was Never Worse (And Never Better)"_

* * *

><p>When he's out of things to do - when he finishes the last chapter in one of the books he's borrowed from the library, or when he's too tired to fall asleep - he paints.<p>

They aren't supposed to leave their rooms after midnight, but midnight is when Oliver feels the most creative, so that's when he slips out of his bed and tiptoes down the bare, stark-white hallway and sets up an easel in the common room. The nurses find him there in the mornings, sleeping with his face resting against his canvas, and they wash the paint from his cheek and help him back to his room and tell him he really must stop getting up after hours.

But even the nurses can't deny that Oliver has _talent_.

* * *

><p>She comes to the hospital when she's eleven.<p>

She doesn't speak - maybe she's just being stubborn, or maybe something traumatized her, but they move her into the long-term ward with Oliver, and when he asks what she's in for she turns to face the wall instead of answering.

He doesn't mind. He never minds. He simply paints. People come and go, but Oliver is always here, in this place that smells like formaldehyde and looks like a whitewashed prison. It isn't home - home is a place with mothers and fathers, which is something Oliver used to have, he thinks, but not anymore - but the hospital is, at the very least, _safe._

He tries to ask the girl about the metal braces on her legs, but the girl won't answer, and Oliver drops the subject after the first day and leaves the girl alone.

* * *

><p>He gets the story from a few of the kids in the short-term ward: Katie's parents are dead. Murder-suicide. Very violent. Katie saw the whole thing. Tried to kill herself afterwards - jumped off the roof, broke both her legs and snapped three ribs - but she survived, and now she doesn't talk.<p>

It's not the worst backstory he's ever heard, but it's certainly grim.

He decides to do a painting for her. He swings himself out of bed and goes down the hallway just as the clock strikes midnight, but when he gets to the common room he stops short.

Katie is there, sitting in a chair with her metal-encased legs sprawled awkwardly in front of her, painting on his easel.

"What're you doing?" he asks, not unkindly.

Katie doesn't look up, so Oliver walks around behind her and squints over her shoulder. Her painting is shaky, but he can tell what she's trying to create: a blonde woman with wings, soaring through a cerulean sky. "Your mum?" Oliver asks quietly.

Slowly, Katie shakes her head.

"You, then?"

She nods.

Oliver picks a brush from the box she's using and dips it into the white paint. He adds a few brushstrokes. "There," he says, setting the brush down on the tray of the easel. "That's me. With you."

Katie looks at the boy in the painting with no expression on her face.

"So you aren't so alone," Oliver adds.

Katie's mouth twitches into something almost like a smile.

* * *

><p>He paints all kinds of flight after that - birds, airplanes, people with wings on their backs, people leaping from cliffs and gliding through the air. He meets Katie at midnight in the common room, and they paint together, adding brushstrokes one at a time. He teaches her the proper techniques, coaches her on which colors to use ("Don't use white," he tells her, and it isn't for any real reason, it's just because there's too much damn white in this place already). People come and go around them, but Katie and Oliver stay; he barely speaks to her because she never speaks back, but he thinks she may be his closest friend.<p>

He tells her she's the best he's ever seen. It doesn't mean much.

"So how's the painting career?" his therapist asks during one of their weekly sessions.

"Good. I have a student."

"Do you now." The therapist smiles. "That's good. Who is it?"

"Katie Bell."

"Katie's a lovely girl."

"She is," Oliver says, nodding. "She's the only one here who loves to paint as much as I do."

"I'm glad you've made a friend," the therapist says as she jots something down in her little spiral notebook. "Now, let's talk a little more about the new treatments. How do you feel?"

He shrugs. "Fine. The same."

The therapist writes it down. "Any improvements?"

"Katie can paint an entire scene in one night."

The therapist gives him a smile that he thinks looks a little sad. "Well. That's a brilliant feat, Ollie."

* * *

><p>By the time she's been there two years, Katie's paintings have gotten so good that Oliver doesn't have any more to teach her, so they spend their nights sitting in front of the window late at night and watching the stars and making wishes.<p>

(And Oliver doesn't mind telling her what his wishes are, because it's not as if she's going to tell anyone, and it's not as if they're going to come true anyway.)

"I wish I had a bike," Oliver says, tilting his head back. "A really fast one. I'd go off jumps with it, try to get some air."

Katie says nothing. She's twirling her hair between her fingers.

"I used to have a bike, when I lived at home," he tells her. "Before they sent me here."

Katie begins to pick at her leg brace.

"My mum wasn't very nice to me, at home," he says softly. "She didn't want me. She told me that sometimes - that she didn't want me."

Katie's green eyes flick up to meet his.

"Sometimes she loved me, though. She just couldn't decide. Sometimes she really did love me." He shrugs. "I miss her."

Katie gets up and moves to the easel. She pegs up a blank canvas and lets her fingers hover over the brushes before she chooses one and dips it into the red paint.

"I'll never get to go back," he says. "They won't let me. Too dangerous. My mum might - she might try to kill me again." His eyes are brimming with tears, but he isn't embarrassed, even though fifteen is too old to cry. Katie isn't going to tell anyone.

(Katie's brush is flying over the canvas.)

"She didn't mean to hurt me," Oliver says, and he isn't sure whether he's talking to Katie or to the stars or to himself. "She didn't realize - it was my fault. She'd told me to stop splashing in the bath, and I didn't listen."

Katie's brush stops.

"I was five," he says, even though he knows she probably doesn't care. "Lost consciousness underwater. Technically dead for seven minutes. And now - here I am. Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome and all." He puts a hand against his chest. "I can't breathe," he explains. "That's all it means. My lungs leak."

Katie is painting again.

"There's more to it than that, though. Brain damage from the lack of oxygen." He sighs. "The left side of my brain - the half that stores logic, the half that lets you be rational? - that's gone, for me. Ruined. It's as if someone painted right over it with white. It's a blank space, that half. All I have left is the creative side."

Katie sets down her paintbrush and pulls the canvas off the easel. She comes back over to the couch and sits next to him, painting angled away from him so he can't see.

"So now I paint," he says. "What else can I do? It's an obsession. It's all I think about. It's all I_ let_ myself think about. Because if I think about anything else - " He breaks off. "Did you ever hear of Wonderland?"

She shakes her head.

"It's in a book my mum used to read to me. I don't remember it very well." He's looking at the stars again. "Wonderland was a giant dream where nothing made sense, where nothing was logical or rational. That's what the world feels like to me. It's like I was dropped into Wonderland when I was five years old, and I got lost in it, and I'll never get out." He doesn't realize his fist is clenched until he feels his nails poking into his palm. "Sometimes I think about just _ending _everything and flying away." He lets out a small laugh through his nose. "I've never told anyone about that before."

Katie gently presses her painting into his hands.

It's the two of them - Katie with her blonde hair, Oliver with his blue eyes - and they both have wings, like angels, but neither is dead - he can tell because she added the braces on her legs and the tubes he sometimes uses to breathe, and if they were in Heaven they wouldn't have those things anymore.

(They people in the painting are dressed in red and gold, but the sky behind them is white.)

Oliver sighs and twists his arm around Katie. "You're a good artist," he says. "Nearly as good as I am, if you want to know the truth."

Katie nudges him and raises her eyebrows.

"Only _nearly_ as good. Don't get cocky, Bell. You're fast, yes, but speed isn't everything."

She rolls her eyes and snuggles into his arm. They've never been this close to each other before.

"Do you ever dream about - it?" Oliver asks quietly.

She nods.

"Do you ever paint it?"

She shakes her head.

"I know." He sighs. "Neither do I."

They're both looking at the sky. The sun has just begun to rise.

"Life's never been worse, has it," he says with a smirk.

She makes a noise in her throat that could be a laugh.

"But at least you're here now." He looks at her. "I'm glad you're here, Katie."

Katie tilts her head and kisses his cheek.

(It's sweeter than any words he's ever heard.)

* * *

><p><em>[Disney Character Competition: Mad Hatter - write about someone with odd views]<em>

_[Greek Mythology Mega Prompt Challenge: Uranus - write something completely AU]_

_[Build-A-Bear Challenge: sporty outfit - write about Oliver Wood]_

_[2015 New Years Resolution Competition: Hospital!AU]_


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